


Once A Rogue

by Sticks



Category: Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi Series - Aaron Allston & Troy Denning & Christie Golden
Genre: AU, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:57:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sticks/pseuds/Sticks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He always tried to be what she needed. If he couldn't catch her when she fell, he could at least pick her back up. If she let him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dubrillion, 43 ABY  
  
Rain sheeted off the hovel’s flat durasteel roof and pooled in the mud at Kyp’s feet. Through a gap between the door and the salvaged construction material that served as a wall, he glimpsed the dim greenish light of a single glowlamp. He sensed her inside, her attention bent to some domestic task, and he thought about knocking on the door. That seemed silly, in part because he could just as easily call out to her through the Force, but mostly because he didn’t think he could knock without bringing down the whole shack.  
  
Dubrillion had never quite recovered from the Yuuzhan Vong’s terraforming, as the torrential spring rains testified. Nor had it stabilized economically, as indicated by the shantytowns that had sprouted around Kershais City. On his way up the winding, mud-slick path, Kyp had sensed the occupants of the huts to either side in varying states of desperation and melancholy. This was a place where people went when life had beaten them. This was a place where misery festered and hope was crushed out.  
  
And yet this place, of all places, was where Jaina Solo had come when she disappeared.  
  
Though her location surprised him, to be sure, it had not been difficult to find. Grand Master Skywalker, anticipating the possibility of her withdrawal from the Order, had a tracer beacon installed on her X-Wing. Kyp doubted that Luke expected it to last long there, and indeed Jaina had found and removed it, as evidenced by the fact that he’d traced the signal directly to this spot and there was no snubfighter in sight. She also made a few adjustments--it had taken Kyp nearly a day to realize the seemingly random signal was actually a repeating pattern, and that when translated from Mon Cal blink code it said,  _You could have just asked_.  
  
Her sense of humor, at least, was intact.  
  
Brushing her with his Force awareness once more, he tried to gauge her condition. Physically, she appeared to be completely recovered from the injuries she had sustained in her duel with Darth Caedus. That was a relief, but what concerned him more was her emotional state. He couldn’t get a read on her; she was closed to him, and if he tried to press harder he ran the risk that she’d sense him there and--  
  
“Come on in, Durron. Soup’s almost done.”  
  
He silently scolded himself for being so open, then thought fast. “You’re cooking?” he called. “Maybe I’d better stay out here.”  
  
Her sardonic laugh rang out through the planks and scrap metal, and produced a pang in him. He had missed that sound. He gingerly opened the door and went inside.  
  
It was warm, thanks in large part to a little unit she had rigged from a portable ration reheater, and Kyp noted that the shack looked surprisingly sturdy from the inside. Beams and struts interlaced in ingenious ways and bare patches were filled with cobb, and he saw scraps of heat-reflecting foil woven into the ceiling, which was so low his head brushed it if he stood straight. Even in the midst of a downpour, there were no leaks in the roof, though a collector outside brought rainwater in to fill a basin. The hut was smaller than most shipboard staterooms and contained only a nest-like bed against one curving wall, a military storage trunk next to it, a single plasteel table and chair with a datapad and glowlamp, a little refresher unit behind a divider, and the reheater where Jaina crouched.  
  
“Not the sort of place one would expect to find a goddess,” Kyp commented in a dry tone.  
  
Jaina watched him evenly, stirring a pot on the reheater, then nodded toward the table. “Have a seat.” He shrugged out of his sopping cloak and draped it over the back of the chair, then lowered himself into it; the seat was low and he realized she had shortened the legs from factory norm. He saw the telltale scorched and bubbled traces of a lightsaber where the chair met the plank floor, but she had obviously measured twice: the legs were cut with surgical precision. It added to the impression of scrupulous care Kyp got from the shack as a whole, which complemented a sense of lived-in comfort. Leave it to Jaina Solo to have the coziest place in the refugee camp, kept to military standards of cleanliness.  
  
“Uncle Luke sent you,” she stated as she poured the contents of the pot into a small ceramic bowl. “Is this a courtesy visit, or does he want you to bring me back, now that I’ve defected?”  
  
He cleared his throat, immediately on the defensive, but also grateful that Jaina could always be relied upon to cut straight to the power cables. “Actually, he called it going rogue.”  
  
With the barest hint of a smile, she set the bowl and a spoon on the table before him. “Interesting choice of words.” She crossed to the storage trunk and retrieved a sealed canister, which turned out to contain most of a loaf of dark bread.  
  
“I thought the same,” he agreed as she tore off a hunk of bread and offered it to him. “Though it does imply that you stopped being a rogue at some point in the past.”  
  
She huffed a laugh and pulled off another piece of bread for herself, then went behind the divider and returned with a yard of white absorbent fabric. She tossed it to Kyp, and he started wringing out his hair with one hand and spooning up the soup with the other. It was thin, with small slices of a vegetable he couldn’t identify, but it tasted wonderful after a hike through the rain. “It’s a courtesy visit,” he said after a few mouthfuls. “Everyone just wants to know you’re okay.”  
  
There was silence for the space of several breaths, and he finally glanced over at her. She was gazing at him, her face unreadable. “What are you going to tell them?” she asked softly.  
  
“What do you want me to tell them?” he replied. At that she quirked another almost-smile and moved past him to sit cross-legged on the bed after removing her boots.  
  
And that, Kyp thought to himself, was where the conversation died. He could not for the life of him think of a sentence that didn’t careen straight over the event horizon of what Jaina had done. Moreover, he could not bring himself to speak of trifles. It felt dishonest. So, for the next several minutes, he ate his soup in silence, until something occurred to him and he fixed Jaina with a suspicious stare.  
  
Of course she knew exactly what he was thinking. “No, I didn’t drug it,” she assured him sardonically. “I’m not eating any because I already had supper with a family down the hill earlier this evening. And also because I only have one bowl.”  
  
“Making friends?” he asked after swallowing the mouthful he had been warily holding. The thought of her endearing herself to the shantytown’s residents was somewhat comforting. At least she wasn’t alone.  
  
“I fixed their water cycler last week. They were just paying me back.”  
  
Kyp suspected she had done many such favors for her neighbors. He wondered if they knew who she was, or even that she was a Jedi. Perhaps she was masquerading as an unemployed snubfighter mechanic. He scraped the last bits of soup from the bottom of the bowl. “That was delicious. Really. It didn’t taste like industrial solvent at all.”  
  
She made a face at him, then turned to retrieve something from under the patchwork mattress. “Now that you’re done, we can get down to business.” Before he could respond, she tossed the tracer beacon onto the table. “Why did Grand Master Skywalker really send you?” The bantering lightness in her voice was gone. She was as cold as the barrel of a blaster on his temple.  
  
“I told you,” he said, treading carefully. “Everyone just wants to know you’re all right.”  
  
“You’re a kriffing terrible liar, Durron.”  
  
They both knew that wasn’t strictly true. She was the only one who always saw through him, and that had come at the cost of destroying her trust. Still, he felt his ire rise. Something in her tone reminded him sharply of the late lamented Mara Jade Skywalker. He was tempted to tell her so, to marvel at how similar they had turned out to be in all the worst ways, but sensed that this would be unwise, so he held on to that impulse in case the conversation went even further downhill. “Fine,” he bit off at last. “The truth is that your uncle didn’t send me.”  
  
Her head jerked back. “He didn’t?”  
  
“Nope,” he declared, pleased to have surprised her. “He gave me the sensor signature for this tracer, and his blessing to come after you, but I had already been given my assignment by then. Your father asked me to find you.”  
  
At that her expression softened. Just a little, and anyone who didn’t know her well would never have noticed, but he did. “They miss you,” he added quietly.  
  
“They don’t understand,” she began, and for an instant he thought her shields would come down and wondered that it should be so easy. But then she caught herself and reasserted her Solo bravado, turning a disinterested gaze on the far wall. “They can comm me anytime.”  
  
He recognized this as a point where he needed to back off, so he said, “Okay.” Jaina’s eyes snapped back onto him. “What?”  
  
She looked at him incredulously. “Okay?” she echoed. “You’re not going to argue with me? Tell me it’s not the same, that my parents need me close by, especially now? Or maybe it’s the Jedi Order that needs me. Should I come back so Uncle Luke can make me a Master and I can sit on the Council and clean up his messes and get my robes washed on the wrong settings by apprentices?”  
  
That torrent of words was exactly what he wanted to hear from her, but her voice hadn’t quite risen enough. If he knew any one thing about Jaina Solo, it was that she would never weep until she spent a while yelling first. He knew just how to make that happen. “Maybe Jag needs you,” he suggested, his voice still low and gentle.  
  
It had the opposite effect. Jaina glanced to the floor, her expression rueful. “He has an Empire to run.”  
  
“He’d make time for you.”  
  
“I don’t want anyone to have to make time for me,” she stated flatly, but there was no bite in her voice. Suddenly she grinned crookedly. “You know what he told me, once?”  
  
Silently Kyp wondered if he wanted to know, but he raised an encouraging brow. “He said,” Jaina went on, “he could see his unborn children in my eyes.”  
  
 _Always a romantic, Fel_. “Did you tell him that’s not how babies are made?” he asked before he could stop himself.  
  
“I told him he’d be sleeping in his own bunk that night,” she said scornfully, and he smirked in appreciation. Then she was serious once more. “I don’t know how long I’ll need to stay here. And I don’t know where I’ll need to go after that. But I know I’m not coming back to Coruscant anytime soon, and nobody is going to change my mind about that. Not you, not Dad, not Jag.”  
  
Kyp nodded solemnly. “Fine. But you should know, that comment about apprentices was unnecessarily harsh. Ronto Clan is no good at it, but by the time they’re in Bantha they have a healthy sense of fear and they’re tall enough to operate the laundry droids.” Her smile was guarded. He had yet to actually get a rise out of her, and it was starting to piss him off. “Anyway,” he went on, “I figured you’d say something like that, but your parents aren’t the only ones who need you close by. That’s why I’ve decided to stay here.”  
  
The smile disappeared. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve--”  
  
The hovel’s door burst open and a small blur streaked inside, babbling heavily-accented Basic too fast to follow. Whatever it was seized Jaina’s hand and started tugging her toward the door. “Straeli, slow down,” Jaina insisted, and the blur stilled, revealing a juvenile Ryn in an obvious state of distress.  
  
Straeli panted, half-crouching from the exertion of running some distance, and finally cried, “Landslide!”  
  
By the time Kyp made it to the door, Jaina had her boots back on and grabbed Straeli’s hand again. They took off at a pace Kyp couldn’t match, not because of age or fitness, but rather the fact that he didn’t know this place, and in the dark and the rain he worried about sliding right off an overhang. But it wasn’t hard to figure out where they were going. There was an epicenter of distress in the Force, down and to the east. He picked his way through the camp as fast as he could, and caught his breath when he glimpsed it through the rain.  
  
It looked like half the mountain had come down. He mistrusted his sense of scale, but there were easily two dozen huts crushed under what appeared to be a solid slab of stone three meters thick, and a layer of choking mud just for good measure. Refugees who had been spared gathered in twos and threes, clearly dismayed but helpless to act. Kyp reached past them to the heap and discovered, to his astonishment, points of awareness beneath the stone. Not many of them, and they were fading fast, but they were there.  
  
“They’re still alive down there,” he shouted, and that was when the panic really began. People started to dig--with whatever tools they had, scraps of metal, their bare hands--and call out to friends and relatives, but he could see their efforts were futile. Anyone lucky enough to have found a hole when the rock fell would have no more than a few minutes’ worth of air. If he could lift it...  
  
But he had no time to gather his strength. The survivors all fell silent and gazed over the edge of the slab at the small figure who had climbed up and now moved across it with purpose in her stride. She stopped and looked down, and Kyp felt the intensity of her focus through the Force, and then Jaina dropped to one knee and pressed the shatterpoint.  
  
A crack louder than thunder resounded down the hillside. Faults spread over the surface of the slab and a cloud of pulverized stone rose into the air as boulder-size chunks separated and settled. Though their awe was palpable, the refugees wasted no time in chipping away at the smaller sections of stone. Kyp hurried to direct them toward the dimming consciousness he found in the Force.  
  
They saved five. It was dawn by the time the last old woman, who had been in a root cellar of all places, was pulled from the muck. Kyp had not paused to catch his breath in all that time, and no sooner had he wondered where Jaina was than she appeared at his side. Her eyes were tired, her clothing coated with mud, her expression drained, but her Force aura was radiant and suffused with power. Kyp was overcome with something he was too exhausted to identify, but when Jaina met his gaze she seemed to recognize it. “Come on,” she said, and they threaded their way back to her hovel.


	2. Chapter 2

She surprised him with her boldness. As soon as the door swung shut behind them, Jaina balled her fists in his soaked tunic and pulled him hungrily down to her mouth. Kyp considered, for approximately a tenth of a second, stopping her and trying to talk this over. Then he cursed himself for a fool and shoved his hands into her hair, reciprocating the kiss with a ferocity he didn’t believe he could muster after so much exertion through the night.   
  
With her hands, her teeth, and the Force, she shucked him of his wet clothes. She moved with a laser beam’s single-mindedness, an economy of motion that rendered him nude in a matter of seconds. For his part, Kyp tried to go slowly, to savor the gradual revelation of her body. As she pushed his trousers down over his hips, he contemplated her collarbone and brushed it with his fingers, tugging her tunic off her shoulder, letting it fall away until one small and perfect breast was free. Impatiently, she went to work on him and he split his awareness between the frankly incredible things her small hands were doing around his member and the way her nipple felt between his fingers. He was gentle, mindful of the roughness of his calluses. He could feel the echo of her heartbeat.   
  
It seemed as pleasurable to touch her as it was to be touched by her, and that struck him strange by virtue of the fact that it did not feel strange at all. Force, he had waited so long for this. For her. Even when he was with someone else, he knew now he had been waiting for her. He was not bitter about it; waiting for Jaina seemed as important and noble as any other thing he had ever done, and anyway, he had her now.   
  
Kyp reached down with his right hand and took her left, placing them palm to palm at her eye level. Jaina paused in her ministrations and studied the press of their hands, the simple intimacy of that touch. His wrist, broken and healed so long ago, and her fingers, crushed under Caedus’ heel and slowly mended in the months between their duel and her departure. For just a moment her face opened up.  
  
“Say something,” he whispered.  
  
Her expression irised shut like a ship’s docking ring and the grasp of her right hand turned hard, insistent. “Get on the bed,” she said.   
  
That was something, he supposed, though far from what he’d meant, and she surely knew it. Nevertheless, he hurried to comply, and she stripped off the rest of her clothes and joined him. She swung a leg over his waist, but at the last second he put both hands on her hips and rolled with her momentum, wresting her over to land on the sheet.   
  
She hissed a Mandalorian curse and tried to fight her way out of his grip, but he pinned her down. “No,” he proclaimed firmly. “You want satisfaction, Goddess, and I won’t disappoint you. Next time maybe we’ll do it your way, but for now...” He dropped his head and brushed his lips against the muscles of her abdomen, moving lower by degrees. The tension in her hips increased for a moment, then eased, and by the time his mouth found the soft curls that hid her sex, she was parting her legs for him, willing and wanting.  
  
He paused for just a moment to stare, to breathe the scent of her, to note that she was already wet, and then she raised her head and demanded, “What are you waiting for?” Kyp huffed a laugh and leaned forward to taste her. She couldn’t stop herself from shivering as he swept the tip of his tongue over the length of her slit and up to the little bundle of nerves that fairly begged to be manipulated. He was quite certain she’d never had this done for her the right way, never been lavished with the proper attention or treated with the zeal she deserved. He would change that. He adjusted his grasp on her hips, lifting her knees over his shoulders, and pressed his mouth to the warm, sweet wetness at the place that would dissolve her tension. There was a joke to be made about shatterpoints, but he had better things to do with his mouth than talk.  
  
Jaina stretched her body languorously, pressing her entrance firmly against his mouth, and clasped her hands behind her head in a posture of repose. She let out a little sigh. This would not do at all--Kyp would not listen to her moan under her breath, or watch her recline like he was giving her a foot massage. The shack was sturdy, but it was not soundproof, and she was keeping that in mind. He would make her forget. On his mental list of things to do, he put  _Make Jaina Solo scream_  at the very top, and redoubled his efforts. He slipped into a cadence as complicated as lightsaber rudiments, only this one involved licking, sucking, and clasping her between his lips. To his delight, she arched her back, but it wasn’t enough. He let go of her left hip and put his index and middle fingers just below where his tongue was dancing.   
  
Her gasp was just short of vocalized, and her muscles constricted around his fingers. For an instant he wondered if he’d caused her pain. Nine hells, how long had it been for her? Maybe he should have started with one finger. Too late now. He rotated them, stroking her inner walls, seeking the place that was very nearly inaccessible, but so worth the effort. When he found it, she swore loudly and he laughed against her flesh. He pulled his fingers halfway out and then pushed back in, hooking them to graze the spot again. Her calves twitched against his back and a low groan started deep in her throat.  _Yes_. He turned it into a rhythm, syncopated with that of his tongue and lips, and ignored the protestations of his jaw muscles. He went faster, giving her no respite. He drank her juices; she tasted like sin.  
  
“Kyp,” she said, a plea. He hummed against her and she yelped. “Kyp!” He felt the warmth in the pit of her belly--felt it through her, in fact. She had opened their bond just enough to show him how he made her feel... and  _oh Force_ , that was more than any partner had ever given him. He wanted to bask in it, but he feared getting swept away, caught up in a feedback loop that would leave them helplessly climaxing together until their hearts gave out. So, as much as it pained him to do so, he shunted aside the feelings she was sending him and focused on bringing her over.  
  
When he did, less than a minute later, she broadcast her ecstasy so powerfully that any Force-sensitive in a three system radius likely felt a piece of it. And as for their immediate surroundings, he suspected most of the shantytown heard her. He mentally scratched the first item off his to-do list.  
  
The last tremor faded and he lifted himself up to see his good work. Jaina’s eyes were open but unfocused, her expression blissful. She was somewhere far away, but he would bring her back. “Are you on inhibitors?” he asked her.  
  
“Took my booster last week,” she said drowsily, just barely coherent enough to think of such practicalities.   
  
Without further hesitation he entered her, and she returned to the moment with an exultant cry. Despite her subordinate pose on the mattress, despite the exhausting crescendo from which she had just come down, she started to move. He clutched at her hips but could not stop them from grinding against his, drawing infinity loops, maddeningly fluid gyrations. If she kept this up, he wouldn’t last another minute.   
  
He felt her reach for him, ask him to show her what she had shown him. He gave her a taste of it, and she gasped. The jolt made her stop moving just long enough for him to gain control again, and he pressed her hard against the mattress, slowing to a comfortable pace. “Don’t rush me, Goddess,” he breathed in her ear, bringing his hands up to capture her wrists and keep her locked in a sprawl that allowed no leverage against him. “I want to enjoy this.” With every slow, full thrust, he spoke through their bond in fragments, telling her exactly what he was enjoying.  _You. Open. Wet. Warm. Smooth. Yielding. Mine. Mine. Mine._    
  
Muscle by muscle she relaxed beneath him until she was pliant and still. She gazed up him and whispered, “Is this how you always wanted me, Master Durron?”  
  
His mind and his body responded in completely different ways--he was struck dumb with confusion and doubly aroused at her words. He quickened his pace, releasing her wrists and running his hands down her arms, her ribcage, her hips, back up to her throat, then her breasts, which he palmed roughly. “I never cared about how,” he said, hurrying to form the words before he lost the ability to speak. “I just wanted you.” He gave her another glimpse of the way she made him feel and she moved once more, arching her back, pressing herself closer to him. Her hands threaded in his hair and her thighs locked around his waist. They were a closed circuit, cycling pleasure through themselves, each perfectly attuned to what the other needed in every moment.   
  
Kyp groaned a sound of surrender, unable to hold back anymore. He found the rhythm that would bring him over and maintained it, driving his hips into hers so fast and so hard he was sure they’d both bruise. Jaina moaned and the wanton sound was just the stimulus he needed. He fixed his mouth over hers as he came, stifling a cry against her lips. Through their bond she felt it all, and rode his climax to another of her own, bucking her hips and shuddering under him.  
  
He emptied himself, and, bereft of any dignity whatsoever, flopped down beside her on the bed. His chest heaved; he stared at the ceiling without seeing it. The only things in the universe were him and Jaina--he felt currents of the Force eddying around them in infinity loops, warm and golden and so, so full of life. He wanted to laugh but he didn’t have the breath.  
  
Gradually his sweat cooled and the afterglow faded. He looked over to find Jaina watching him closely, her gaze enigmatic, and he kissed her brow. She pulled away and moved to straddle him in one swift motion. Kyp tried to ask her what the Sith she thought she was doing, but he wasn’t quite all there yet and the only thing he managed to say was, “Wuh?”  
  
Jaina smiled sweetly down at him. “You said next time we’d do it my way.” He started to protest, to ask for a respite, but she reached down and her hand brought him back to urgent, aching life. Kyp took a deep breath, called upon the Force for stamina, took hold of Jaina’s hips, and dove back into the depths of her.


	3. Chapter 3

By midday, they had exhausted themselves several times over and rendered each other raw, sore, and utterly sated. Kyp teetered on the edge of sleep, enjoying a haze of gratification, while Jaina got out of bed and collected their clothes. She had an ingenious little drying rack that telescoped out from the wall over the reheater unit, and she hung their things there, though they were only a bit damp by then. When she came upon his utility belt, she paused, then unhooked his commlink, fetched her multitool and a datapad from the storage locker, and moved to her little plasteel table where the tracer beacon still sat. She went to work and Kyp pushed himself up on his elbows to enjoy the view. Jaina felt him watching, glanced at him sidelong, and gave her hips a little wiggle. He raised his hand to his brow and said woefully, “You are never going to let me sleep.”

She favored him with a lopsided grin. “Sleep is for the weak, and you, Master Durron, are most certainly not.” She shut a panel on the beacon and unhooked her datapad from a port on his commlink, then sauntered--there was simply no other word for it--back over to him and held out the little device. “Signal’s encrypted now, but your commlink has a receiver lock. No matter where I go, you’ll be able to find me.” 

Kyp shook his head. “I meant what I said earlier. I’m not leaving.” 

The beacon flew from the table to the far wall with a metallic smack, but it was meant to withstand some abuse and so remained in one piece. 

As Kyp stared up at Jaina, it occurred to him that when he had kept her from pursuing wholesale vengeance against the Yuuzhan Vong she had been a half-trained adolescent, freshly initiated to a universe of death and not yet certain of what she wanted. Now, she had lost her brother again, in small but devastating ways over time, and the final blow had come from Jaina herself. There was no vengeance to seek, but there was still a dark path to follow, and if Jaina chose to take it now, could Kyp really hope to stop her? 

Then she drew in a deep breath, mustered another smile, and said, “Sorry. That was mean.”

Master Skywalker hadn’t expressed any concerns about the possibility of Jaina following her brother’s trajectory, but why else would he plant the beacon? Something about that was niggling at him, but he put it aside for the moment. “Jaina,” he said softly, “is it really wise for you to be alone right now?”

“I’m not alone,” she shot back. “I’m surrounded by life, and problems to solve. Every day is new and different. The people here respect me, and don’t look at me with pity in their eyes.”

“Does that fill the hole?” Kyp asked. When she furrowed her brow at him, he elaborated, “The one Jacen left?”

Jaina sneered at him. “You think I’ll be able to patch that hole by coming back to the Order?” she scoffed, and turned away to pull a threadbare robe from her locker. He was mildly disappointed that she was going to cover herself up, but he supposed it would help his focus.

“Not remotely,” Kyp assured her. “In fact, I believe it would make things much worse. You were right, before--the overwhelming majority of the Council want to make you a Master.”

“And what was your vote at that referendum?” she said bitterly. 

This, he hoped, was it. He lowered his voice and tinged it not with pity but tenderness, then answered, “You’re not ready.”

She stood there in silence, and when she finally looked back at him, he knew he’d cracked through. There was a lostness in her eyes, and he hurried to wrap her in his arms and ease her back down to the mattress. She cried then, angry, helpless tears. Kyp stroked her hair and murmured consoling platitudes, hating the way they sounded from his mouth. Jaina seemed to go through stages--she was motionless at first, but then she tensed up and struggled in his grasp for a moment, and finally she wailed against his chest, an anguished and throat-rending sound. She was so open in that instant that Kyp had only to reach out and feel what she felt.

\-- _hole in his heart hole in my heart why did i i know why nobody else could can’t i take it back go back to being kids grew up karked it all up simple then go back take it back bring him back_ \--

Kyp took a shaky breath and cut himself off from her grief, but it seemed she had spent herself anyway. She leaned against him, her head on his chest, eyes open but distant, expression soft and muscles slack. He breathed in the scent of her hair, and ran his hand up and down her spine through the fabric of the robe. He could, he was fairly certain, stay like this for weeks.

But Jaina could not. After too short a time, she disengaged herself from him and swiped at the tear tracks on her face. “A kriff and a cry,” she quipped, with another lopsided smile. Shields up. “How much do you charge for your therapy sessions, Master Durron?” 

All at once it hit him. “The beacon,” he breathed. “Why didn’t you just deactivate it?” Jaina looked up at him, far too innocently. “Unless you didn’t really want to be alone. And who else would come for you? Zekk is missing, Jag has an Empire to run, your parents have Amelia, Master Skywalker was willing to give you your space--it would have to be me.” He felt suddenly cold, and foolish, and used. A kriff and a cry, indeed. 

Jaina got up and stepped over him. “Come back anytime,” she said blithely, and went about cooking lunch for one. 

“You’re a piece of work, Solo.”  _And you’re a fool, Durron. Her fool._  He always had been, but now the deal was sealed.

“You and I are the same,” she replied over her shoulder. “I knew what I wanted, and you were kind enough to oblige me.”

He grimaced at her back. “You could have just asked.” Then, in a hiss, “Sithspawn.” Kyp dressed mechanically, with a sour taste in his mouth. Before he exited the little shack he glanced at her, but she was facing away, ignoring him totally. Even as he cursed her in silence on his descent to Kershais City, even as he considered tossing his commlink into the mud, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away. 

He doubted he’d even make it out of the spaceport.


End file.
